


Half A World Away

by vials



Category: James Bond (Craig movies)
Genre: Established Relationship, M/M, and worried!James, this has a lot of flustered!Q
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-03
Updated: 2016-12-03
Packaged: 2018-09-06 06:20:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,399
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8738098
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vials/pseuds/vials
Summary: Several days after Q goes missing, James gets a phone call. He certainly wasn't expecting to play role reversal with his stranded Quartermaster, but there's nothing like the backdrop of catastrophe to make the truth come out.





	

The phone’s sudden buzzing startled James awake, and his first thought was that this was bloody typical. He had barely slept since Q had vanished; of course he would be woken up as soon as he managed to grab a few hours.

The thoughts faded as soon as full consciousness returned to him, and by the time he snatched up the phone and hit the call accept button, he was only focused on the hope that this could finally be some news. He could think of no other reason why someone would be calling at this time of the night; he was so distracted that fact the the call ID was totally blank didn’t register until he had already pressed the phone to his ear. 

“Who is this?” he asked, and for several seconds there was no response. The only thing James could make out was an odd ticking sound, one that was familiar but that didn’t quite connect yet. “Hello? Is anyone there?”

The clicking continued and then suddenly stopped, leaving the line ridiculously clear, and James frowned, wondering what seemed so familiar about it. Finally it connected, and he almost swore in frustration – how could he have forgotten? That was the sound that Q’s encrypted phones made when they were securing a line. 

“Q,” James said, quietly, and he hardly dared to hope. He didn’t know what he would do if there was no answer, or – worse – if there was, and it wasn’t Q at all.

“James.”

Q’s voice was just as quiet, and James couldn’t quite make out everything he could hear in it. Relief, yes, but there was a thickness in his voice that told James he had been crying, and a tightness to it that told him he was in pain. James sat up a little straighter, every part of him suddenly aching to do something but not knowing what.

“Q,” James said again, struggling to keep his voice steady. “What’s going on?”

“I –” Q began, and then he went silent so suddenly that James thought the line had dropped. The silence lasted a couple of seconds, and then he heard Q take a shuddering breath. “I love you. I love you so much, do you know that?”

“I know,” James said, now making a serious effort to stay calm. “I love you too. Are you alright?”

“I’m fine,” Q said, his voice slightly too high. “Well, I’m a little – a little knocked around, I guess, but it really isn’t anything serious. I just – I love you. I want you to know I love you.”

“I love you too,” James said, again, and he would say it hundreds of times, as many times as Q needed to hear it. “You need to tell me what’s going on. Are you safe?”

“I –” Q broke off, and James heard him take another deep breath. “I think so. I think I managed to lose them. I’m not sure. I’m going to have to stay hidden and I don’t know if they’ll find me.”

“Who’s they?”

“I don’t know,” Q said, beginning to sound panicked. “I don’t know what happened, James. I just – I was on my way home and then there’s nothing, nothing at all. I managed to get away but I have no idea how to get the hell out of here, I don’t know how I’m going to get back and –”

“Calm down,” James said, and finally he felt his nerves beginning to settle. This wasn’t what he wanted, not at all, but it was at least something he had experience with and he was beginning to see a direction he could go in. “You can’t panic, Q. You’re not on your own out there. We’ll get a trace on you, we’ll send someone in. All you need to do is watch your back. You can do that. You’ve got this far.”

“OK,” Q said, taking another shuddering breath. “OK. I can do that.”

“Do you know what country you’re in?” James asked. “Anything that can give you a clue? Language they’re speaking, have you seen any landmarks, are you in a town or anything now?”

“Turkey,” Q said instantly. “I know that’s where I am. I recognise the language and I’ve been here before, not to this same place but to the country, when I was younger – it feels the same.”

“Great things always happen in Turkey,” James said, pulling a face, and Q managed a weak laugh.

“I don’t think this was the final destination,” he said, and as he began rattling off the facts, James heard his voice even out slightly, beginning to sound more like the Q he remembered from the comms. “They were talking about going to an airfield, but not one of the main airports. I remember because I was confused about how I didn’t recall flying in the first place. I guess they must have drugged me.”

“Did you escape while travelling to the airfield, or before you left?”

“Only just after we left. There was another car behind us, a taxi or something, completely innocent. I was in the back, I kept twisting around and looking at it until I made them uncomfortable. They thought it was following us so they turned down a side street. God, it was a ridiculously stupid plan. We stopped and one of them went down to the end of the street to check the car was gone and I just –” Q gave another weak laugh. “I just got out and ran, James. I didn’t think it would work.”

“But it did,” James said, smiling proudly.

“Yeah,” Q sounded almost breathless. 

“You said you were injured?” James asked.

“They gave me a bit of a kicking, nothing too bad,” Q said. “There’s a gunshot wound, too, but again, nothing serious –”

“ _What_?”

“It’s nothing, James, honestly –”

“Where?” James demanded, already on his feet and heading towards his laptop. “Christ, Q, you could have mentioned that earlier –”

“It’s just in the arm, James!” Q said quickly. “Don’t – don’t start getting worried, it’s really nothing. I’ve bandaged it up for now and it’s not even bleeding much anymore. I don’t know _what_ kind of prehistoric weapons they’re using but it hasn’t even gone all the way through. I imagine I’ll have to have the bullet pulled out but I suppose that’s a small price to pay.”

“You can still feel your arm?” James asked, as the laptop booted up. “No pins and needles, no numbness? You can move all your fingers?”

“Yes, no, no, yes,” Q said, and James could almost hear the eye roll. He was beginning to understand just what Q went through when the roles were reversed. “It just stings a little bit. It’s alright, honestly.”

“We’ll see about that,” James said. “If you get back here and I find you’ve been playing it down –”

“Oh, I’m sure you’ll _thrash_ me,” Q said, and James gave a small smile.

“I’m letting them know now,” he said, as the laptop finally finished booting. “I’m just going to send the information as you tell me. Do you have anything on you that can give a trace?”

“I can turn location tracking back on the phone, but I can’t do it for long,” Q said, pausing for a moment. “I think that’s how they tracked me in the first place,” he added, sounding thoroughly frustrated. “I can’t be sure yet, but it’s a risk.”

“Hence the encryption,” James said.

“Yes. I thought about just calling and ringing off, but I figured that if they managed to trace it, I would have to move on before anyone got here. I thought if I gave you a general idea first, maybe you could get people close enough that they could reach me before anyone else.”

“It’s worth a shot,” James said. “Where will they be looking for you? Have you gone far?”

“I was walking for a few hours before I called. I’m still walking now, but – I don’t know, I’m just paranoid. I don’t know who’s working for them. I don’t know who might be keeping an eye out for me. I have no idea what’s going on.”

“We’re trying to work it out,” James said, keeping the phone pressed to his ear with his shoulder as he typed up what Q was saying. “Is there anywhere even remotely safe you can get to?”

“No. I doubt they would let a crowded area stop them from trying to grab me, and besides, it’s not that much later here. I’ll have to wait a while before there are crowds to lose myself in.”

“Could you set off a trace and then leave the phone somewhere close to you?” James asked. “Set up a watch point, keep an eye on who shows up, only move if it’s us?”

“That might be all I can do,” Q said, and James heard him sigh. “I wouldn’t be able to talk to you.”

“You can talk to me plenty when you get home.”

“I know.”

“You are coming home, Q.”

“I know,” Q said, his voice thick again, and then, “I love you.”

“I love you too.”

James quickly discovered a new sense of appreciation for Q over the next several hours. He didn’t know how the man stood it, time after time, waiting for a word or a signal from James while he was away on assignment, living with the constant stress that something would go wrong and he would only hear about it once it was too late. The silence was the loudest thing that James had ever experienced; in an effort to ignore it he divided his attention between his laptop screen, flickering with updates from the retrieval efforts, and his phone, laying on the desk next to him. There was nothing else to do but wait, and James had always thought he was good at waiting – waiting for clues, waiting for leads, waiting for targets – but he quickly found that when he was on the other side of things, he was absolutely rubbish at it. He wanted to get up and pace, to do _something_ , but he didn’t dare leave the desk. All he could do was sit rigidly, his fingers drumming against his thighs or gripping the edge of the wood, waiting for news he wasn’t even sure he wanted to hear. 

The sun was up high enough that it was beginning to spill into the bedroom, the cats starting to circle him expectant of breakfast. James glanced down at them as one of them gave a loud meow; he raised an eyebrow, staring at the cat until she blinked slowly at him.

“Traitors, the pair of you,” he said. “Wait until I let Q know that while he was missing, you two furbags were only interested in your breakfast.”

Unashamed, the cat meowed again. James figured he should probably go and feed them now – he could take the phone with him, after all – but it seemed their brief conversation had broken the spell of stillness that had settled over the room since James and Q had hung up, because at that moment the phone began buzzing again, rattling against the desk and getting an unimpressed look from the cats.

He quickly grabbed it, tapping the screen with slightly too much force as he accepted the call. 

It was difficult to believe anything had happened at all, really – Q sounded just as bossy as James remembered, talking as though they were right back in their regular roles and it hadn’t been James sitting sleepless in front of a laptop all night, waiting for news.

“I’m going to need you to pick me up,” he said. “I think a flight after all this nonsense is going to finally kick the arse out of me.”

“At least you can say it’s not the worst thing you’ve been through this weekend,” James said, and Q snorted.

“We’ll see about that. I bloody hate flying. I think this might actually be the worst part.”

James almost said something to play along, but he found that for perhaps the first time in his life, he was incapable of ignoring the tightness around his chest, the nagging feeling that this had been far too close.

“You’re safe?” he asked, his tone sounding unnaturally serious next to how light his previous words had been. “You’ve been seen to? How’s your arm?”

“I told you, it’s really nothing to worry about,” Q said, but he must have sensed James’s next words because he cut him off. “It’s bandaged properly and they’ve given me painkillers. They’ll remove the bullet when I get back, but right now it’s not going anywhere. It’s fine, James. Relax.”

“I’m always relaxed,” James said, and Q laughed. He sounded almost delirious with relief; James was beginning to feel the same way.

“I’ll be back soon,” Q said. “I’m fine, I promise. I probably blew it all way out of proportion earlier.”

“Q, you were quite literally snatched off the street,” James said. “I don’t know how that could have been blown out of proportion.”

“Well, with all the uh… well, the _panicking_ , I guess,” Q said, sounding suddenly sheepish. “I didn’t need to act like I was dying. I doubt they would have killed me. Well, they might have done. But I didn’t know that.”

“Do you still mean it?” James asked, smiling to himself, and there was a long moment of silence as Q no doubt wondered why he had asked the question, and then worked out the answer.

“Oh my god,” he said, and there was another brief pause. “I told you – I said –”

“But do you mean it?” James asked, raising an eyebrow at one of the cats.

“I do mean it,” Q said quickly. “Of course I mean it. I’ve loved you for – for so long now and I was going to say it eventually but I guess it just slipped out, I just – I needed to tell you in case something went really wrong and so I guess I–”

“Calm down,” James sad, finally letting himself laugh. “Don’t you remember what I said in return?”

Another pause.

“That you loved me, too.”

“That’s right.”

A final pause.

“Well, then,” Q eventually said, clearing his throat. “I’m glad we’re in agreement.”

James laughed again, practically feeling the heat in Q’s cheeks through the phone. “Me too.”


End file.
